Spending TIme

“Do not confuse “duty” with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants “just a few minutes of your time, please—this won’t take long.” Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time—and squawk for more!
So learn to say No—and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you.
(This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don’t do it because it is “expected” of you.)”
― Robert A. Heinlein

 

Years ago I realized that while money comes and money goes, that the main currency we have is our time and our attention. This gets affirmed to me daily when I see people doing anything possible to get money, including spending almost every moment they have. It’s true that money pays for food and shelter and our so called basic needs but any of our other needs such as companionship, love, relaxation, meditation and pursuit of enjoyment it is time that becomes the more valuable commodity. Yet so often we are spendthrift with our time, doling it out to everyone who asks or demands it leaving very little for ourselves. That’s ok if we are living the moments we spend on others and ourself, fulfilling our true selves (in Thelemic terms our true will). But if what we do with our time has no value than we are wasting that currency. We can do better.
Blessings, G

 

Click on images to see full-sized:

 

Rise or FallRise or Fall? by G A Rosenberg

 

Crimson and AmythystCrimson and Amethyst by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – January 9 2013

“The way you live your day is a sentence in the story of your life. Each day you make the choice whether the sentence ends with a period, question mark, or exclamation point.”
― Steve Maraboli

 

I believe that each minute brings choices, perhaps they are words in our life’s sentence.  So many things call for our attention and so many people. We have only so much time and so many things to fill it with.  Lately I can totally relate to the line in Peaceful Warrior that “there is never nothing going on”. The question is to what do we give our focus? This week I have been doing the big push to finishing the tarot pictures. As of tonight’s card, I have four left to go and I would really like to get a start on editing them and putting them in some form of book or set. Of course, my son just went back to school and there are a number of things that require attention there as well as house, partner, pets and friends both online and off.  I find myself distractible  at the best of times and this is incredible but still what sentence do I wish to write and how do I intend it to contribute to the whole story? When it comes down to it, people are more important than things so while I may limit my involvement with the outside world until I’m finished, I will still be there for loved ones. I can’t wait to see what the next paragraph will bring. 🙂
Blessings, G

 

Click on image to see full-sized

 
The Lovers

Tarot Trump VI – The Lovers by G A Rosenberg

 
Star-Crossed

Star-Crossed by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – January 2, 2013

“A poet is a blind optimist.
The world is against him for
many reasons. But the
poet persists. He believes
that he is on the right track,
no matter what any of his
fellow men say. In his
eternal search for truth, the
poet is alone.
He tries to be timeless in a
society built on time.”
― Jack Kerouac

 

In the physical, can we truly move beyond time? We acknowledge the ever Now and the ever here yet scramble to locate ourselves, for each moment perceived also becomes unique. No one is the same age as me and no one has seen this road before. With empathy and compassion we can feel another’s road but to feel it is not to tread it but to understand it.
I enjoy this ever changing snowflake now for the paradox it is. Being in my head may be painful at times but would not trade it for the more i work the manual for mine, the more insight i have into others in the here now with me. We all journey together on the same journey yet our destinations have already been met. I love talking in paradoxes. Paradoxes may be the only language that exists to describe reality mechanics..
Blessings, G

 

Click on image to see full-sized

 
There to Catch Should I Fall

There to Catch Me Should I Fall by G A Rosenberg

 

Infinite Amazement

Infinite Amazement by G A Rosenberg

 

Quote of the Day – December 20 2012

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
― Andy Warhol

Funny, I could hear this in Warhol’s characteristic voice and I find myself smiling and wondering why I haven’t quoted Andy Warhol a lot more in this blog. He had some amazingly profound sound bites. Did he intend the depth that pondering on them brings? I don’t know. I prefer to believe that in this case he did. After all, I don’t see time as the cause of change merely the medium in which it happens. Consciousness causes change. Whether it is the consciousness of a plant that follows its cycles, the consciousness of a puppy tearing through clothes and furniture looking for the perfect chew toy, the consciousness of a planet or a universe that contains us all and sets the templates for the cycles we follow or our own consciousness.

That last is the tricky one. So often we claim to want change but we are unwilling to make it happen. Sometimes this happens out of fear, sometimes out of complacency and sometimes because we actually enjoy having a life with enough specific known hassles that we can complain about in it that we really don’t wish to change.

Change after all can be intimidating. It can also be an amazing adventure. As Mr. Warhol stated, it is up to us.
Blessings, G

Click on images to see full-sized

Seeking Shelter

Seeking Shelter by G A Rosenberg

spread light mandala

Spreading Fire Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – Dec 8 2012

“You have to take risks, he said. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun–and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven’t perceived that moment, that it doesn’t exist–that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists–a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles.”
― Paulo Coelho

What was the magic moment of your day? How can you nurture that moment, sustain it and cause it to grow into a magical time… I think that the method that Paulo Coelho suggests to discover the moment in the first place. Paying attention. Tere are times when our attention, our focus is the most legitimate coin that we have, perhaps most of the time.
Blessings, G

 

 

Click on image to see full-sized

 

The Chamber

The Chamber by G A Rosenberg

Looped

Looped by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – November 3 2012

“Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
― Milan Kundera

 

To me this  speaks of facing our shadows, the parts of ourselves that we needed when we needed them and still can feel like comfortable old friends even as we’re sure we’re past them. Those parts can easily be the spiritual onlookers watching us rise saying “Jump Jump, come back to us. You know us and we can play the games we played at an earlier time. The vertigo can hit like a wave of nostalgia towards the who we were  even as we realize we can not be that again. Well actually we can, we can play those mental photographs and fix the lessons feeling compassion for who we were and acknowledging it as part of ourselves. The past is ever contained within our beings. The Fool always has his bag with him. But then the time comes to face our future as well. That dynamic between who we were and who we will become is magical indeed and is happening NOW at every instance of our being.
Blessings, G

 

Click on image to see full-sized

 

Tree in a Reality Storm by G A Rosenberg

 

Serpentine Doorway by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – October 18 2012

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late … to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”
― Eric Roth

This one was a hard learned one for me or perhaps it was a hard earned one. In a way it empowers more than anything else and also shows where the responsibility and the accountability lie. We make the choices…and more often than not, we can choose joy, its always there on the menu…bliss as well.
The numbers on my personal odometer have spun around again as the calendar keeps apace… This past year brought so much bittersweetness, such amazing joy and bliss spiced by moments of gloom or sadness, to all of which I responded as I would. May this year bring deeper meditations, more amazing ways to show gratitude to the universe as well as those around me. May we all feel even more bliss, may more justice happen between nations and between people. May the suffering of all be relieved . May freedom and joy reign and may you all be blessed,
G

Click on image to see full-size

Past Yields to Present by G A Rosenberg

 

Prodding the Centre by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – June 21 2012

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

 

My son when he was quite young would tell us about waking up before he was born. He seemed to think he was in some kind of control room where he was given lots of options. “I chose you guys and I chose red hair and I chose my grandparents and all of these other things including being a boy and then I was born and I looked down and said ‘Hey, I’m a boy!

 

He seemed to intuitive grasp that we choose on some level the circumstances behind our lives to come including it seems to me when we are born. More specifically  we’ve chosen to be alive during this period of upheavals both political, geographical, spiritual and almost every other way. Even if you don’t subscribe to it being a transition of ages It seems that when the dust settles our lives will look very different.

 

Still as old Gandalf tells Frodo, since this is the hand we’ve either dealt ourselves or that has been dealt us (If you subscribe to the idea of Karma than this period by its very nature gives us the ability to balance out quite a bit of stuff). Is it more difficult to be alive now than other periods? I guess that would depend upon your definition of difficult. I can’t see being in Europe doing the time of the Black Plague to be comfortable or born into an oppressed society (of which history has no shortage of). Chances are if you’re reading these words it means you have both access to technology and one would assume time that you can spend not either finding food or shelter or finding a way to gain financial access to the same so that takes care of most of Maslow’s hierarchy right there.

 

Still it seems to me that we are living up to the old curse of living during interesting times for sure. All we can do is navigate our personal waters in the way that works best for each of us.
Blessings, G

 

Click on image to see full-size

and  Some People Just Have Closets by G A Rosenberg

Scattered Eyes Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – February 3 2012

‎”In your waking dreams when you are hushed and listening to your deepest self, your thoughts, like snowflakes, fall and flutter and garment all the sounds of your spaces with white silence”
— Kahlil Gibran, Garden of the Prophet

The process of going within; letting my thoughts fall away, watching them gradually growing silent as i watch myself watching eventually the thoughts slow down their clamouring and i watch and listen, echoes of the well, answers to questions and moments of deepest still silence…
lately even when awake my thoughts rush here and there, why i love sometimes just letting my consciousness stream, Proust like and go where they will merely typing their flow onto the screen.
The truth flows in between the 1s and 0s of the computers binary consciousness. That I can agree with for yes and no seem far too limiting as choices. Einstein stated that God does not play dice with the universe. Are we to believe that he plays tic-tac-toe? As I type this, somewhat concurrently I find myself having a conversation with a friend on FaceBook where past and future, memory and imagination are set at a strange juxtaposition to each other. It was just implied to me that the two are one and the same if time is a factor. To me, this gives me interesting insight into my art… Makes manifestation, a child of the two.
Can we manifest without imagination and experience meeting somewhere? If manifestation could occur, then would we be able to perceive it. The mind boggles which in its own way generates silence. Namaste, G

Click on images to see full-size

Blue and Gold by G A Rosenberg

Rivers by G A Rosenberg